Despite working 18-hour days, including part time as a waitress at a strip club, Hope Arnold was on the verge of losing her Silver Lake home. Then she discovered Airbnb, a website that links vacationers seeking an alternative to hotels and homeowners with rooms to rent. Billing her place as an "artsy and rustic 1927 treehouse," she started renting out her master bedroom, while she slept in the den. It paid off. Arnold has made $39,000 on Airbnb in the last 12 months, and the site now accounts for as much as 70% of her monthly income.

Los Angeles is known for its endless miles of faceless strip malls. However, true Angelenos know that greatness often lurks in the midst of all that beige paint and unappealing signage. And we react with the pleasure of true urban explorers when we stumble across a hidden gem in this tangled concrete jungle of ours. That's just how I felt when I visited Jay's Bar in Silver Lake on a recent Friday evening. The place quietly opened in February. So quietly, in fact, that it completely evaded my razor-sharp bar radar (let's call it my "bardar")

Tony Unruh and Keith Sidley had much in common. Both were Jewish architects from South Africa transplanted to the same Los Angeles neighborhood. Both had married non-Jewish women from Maryland, and both had two young kids. Perhaps most important, both had an affinity for Midcentury architect Gregory Ain. Unruh had bought Ain's old architecture office on Hyperion Avenue. Sidley was living with his family in a Silver Lake home designed and built in the early '40s by Ain. As their friendship grew, the architects spent many nights talking about how they could renovate Sidley's house.

Just north of downtown Los Angeles, skinny homes on tiny lots are sprouting from the hillsides - a building boom of miniature proportions. The rectangular structures come in clusters of six or 15, or even 70, and developers are racing to build them in trendy Silver Lake and Echo Park. They're eyeing younger home buyers who crave hip cafes and proximity to work but don't want a sky-high condo or a Craftsman bungalow. The so-called small-lot homes speak to a growing desire for a more compact and walkable Los Angeles, while still clinging to the single-family ideal that spread outward from downtown over the last century.

The Red Lion Tavern in Silver Lake was kitschy long before being kitschy became a hallmark of counterculture cool. The venerable German beer garden on Glendale Boulevard, which has always been earnest about its over-the-top Bavarian-themed decor and dirndl-clad bartenders, is now situated across the street from one of hipsterdom's most self-consciously ironic and aggressively kitschy bars, the Cha Cha Lounge. This faded Frau of Silver Lake was cool long before a pilgrimage of the young and tragically hip led to a steady gentrification process that last fall resulted in Forbes magazine dubbing Silver Lake "America's Hippest Hipster Neighborhood.

June 30, 2013 | By Michael Finnegan, Catherine Saillant and David Zahniser

Eric Garcetti promised to "work hard on the basics" of running the city as he was sworn in Sunday as the 42nd mayor of Los Angeles in a no-frills ceremony staged to present him as a man of the people. Garcetti vowed to focus relentlessly on guiding the city's economic recovery, slashing business taxes, keeping film production from fleeing L.A. and spurring high-tech jobs on the Westside. "These times demand a back-to-basics mayor, focused above all else on our economy and jobs," Garcetti told the crowd before outlining plans for "a customer-friendly government, one you can actually reach on the phone.

The Silver Lake Picture Show is back again for its second summer, with a slate of free films to be shown outdoors on a patch of Sunset Boulevard real estate known as Sunset Triangle Plaza. Co-founder Nicholas Robbins says seven movies will be shown this summer, at sunset, every other Thursday. Movie lovers are encouraged to bring their own seating for a series of movies curated around an 1980s and '90s theme. Upcoming films are "Wet Hot American Summer" showing on June 27, "The Sandlot" on July 11, "Zoot Suit" on July 25, "Empire Records" on Aug. 8, "To Wong Foo" on Aug. 28 and "The Princess Bride" on Sept.

Every house is a reflection of its owner. Some owners are just a bit more complicated than others. Tim Tattu is still settling into his new house, designed by Los Angeles architect Tom Marble in the steep hills overlooking the Silver Lake Reservoir. It is an explosion of angles, steel and outsized ambition. But the house is also filled with small spaces, contemplative moments and simple materials. It's an epic study in contrasts, as is Tattu himself. Tattu grew up in Hermosa Beach, studied art in the early '90s at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and at the prestigious Städelschule in Germany, and eventually became a set decorator for music videos and TV commercials.

Silent slapstick filmmaker Mack Sennett moved to Los Angeles in 1913, setting up shop in what is now Echo Park, and began to make short movies starring an upstart comedian named Charlie Chaplin. Three years later, he built a set of soundstages to make movies with his movie star girlfriend, Mabel Normand. Now those Silver Lake soundstages, which became part of the Mack Sennett Studios, are getting a face-lift under new owners. PHOTOS: Hollywood Backlot moments Jesse Rogg, a Grammy-nominated music producer, bought the production space for about $3.3 million this year from Stephen Collins, a former photographer who owned the property for nearly three decades.

The list of potential suitors for Hulu keeps getting longer. On Friday, Yahoo submitted a bid for the online video site co-owned by entertainment giants News Corp., Walt Disney Co. and Comcast Corp. Also jumping into the fray are private equity firms KKR & Co. and Silver Lake Management, which is teaming up with the powerful Hollywood talent agency WME Entertainment. Silver Lake owns a minority stake in WME. Silver Lake and KKR declined to comment on the matter. WME did not respond to a request for comment.